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Review Summary

Not to be confused with Mel Gibson's film "The Passion." The life of Jesus, with Henry Ian Cusick, a Royal Shakespeare Company actor, as Jesus. Christopher Plummer is the narrator. Philip Saville, who has done mostly television work here and in Britain, directed. The screenplay is by John Goldsmith, using word-for-word dialogue from the American Bible Society's Good News Bible, in which John 3:16 becomes "God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only son so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die." Nobody said it was pithy. — Anita Gates